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IT Employees At EmblemHealth Fight To Save Jobs (computerworld.com)
Reader dcblogs writes: IT employees at EmblemHealth have united to stop the New York-based employer from outsourcing their jobs to offshore provider Cognizant. Employees say the insurer is on the verge of signing a contract with Cognizant, an IT services firm and one of the largest users of H-1B workers. They say the contract may be signed as early as this week. They fear what a contract with an IT services offshore firm may mean: Humiliation as part of the "knowledge transfer" process, loss of their jobs or a "rebadging" to Cognizant, which they see as little more than temporary employment. Many of the workers, about 200 they estimate, are older, with 15-plus-year tenures. This means a hard job search for them. The IT employees have decided not go quietly. "We're organizing," said one IT employee, who requested anonymity. "We're communicating with one another. They need the knowledge that we have. They can't transition [to Cognizant] without the information that we have. That puts us in a position of strength — they can't fire us for organizing; we're protected by the law," she said.
What's EmblemHealth gonna do? Fire 'em?
Get use to it. Without H1-B reform (not going to happen under Trump / Clinton) , unless you want to walk out now without "parting gifts", you will be training your replacement. Again, without H1-B reform, this will continue to be the "norm".
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
those who paid for it? and will continue to pay for it until the transfer is complete?
Why not, the company is acting antagonistically against them. The only people who benefit if the workers remain quiet is the company.
It sounds like the upper management at EmblemHealth need a vigorous ass-fucking with a sharp stick. (No, really; I have it on good authority that that's actually a well-known folk remedy for greedy sociopaths.)
The problem is a bad IT Staff can still keep the company running. While a good staff if allowed can have the company expand and grow.
However the real question other than years of experience is their staff actually really good at their job?
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
The power of a union comes in backing up the fight of the small people.
When you're talking about the wholesale disenfranchisement of a workforce then it is completely irrelevant if they are unionised or not.
Change the passwords for all the systems you manage and take a few sick days.
It all starts at 0
Why not just monkeywrench the replacement training?
Train them wrong. Give them incomplete information. Be anti-social. Make a game and see how long you can go answering only yes or no. Basically make the training as empty and useless as possible. Waste time on useless details. Take long shits.
Obviously, no active sabotage, that would be a problem. But who says you have to be any good at the training?
>> "they can't fire us for organizing; we're protected by the law," she said. ...but if its a "right to work" state they can legally fire you for any bullshit reason or even not give a reason.
they really think
It's more of a case where they're absolutely certain reacting cooperatively will not save their jobs.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
This, right here... but only to a point.
Get too antagonistic and/or too loud in public, and you will suddenly find yourself rather blackballed when it comes to IT jobs in town...
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Some unions are worthless. There are many that are corrupt. I was a member of a teaching union and watched how they threw adjuncts under the bus to help tenures who only made up 25% of their membership. Their main goal seemed to be to create conflict between the faculty and administration. They would support you if you ever had an issue with administration but pretty much not in any other way.
For at least the last decade, people have been half heartedly making the occasional comments about unionizing the IT workforce.
I hope that the EmblemHealth employees are successful. It is tough to compete in a global economy, but IT is one of the few professions where there is a serious shortage of qualified talent. If the qualified talent refuses to train their replacements, then those replacements are worthless.
Of course, over the next few years a good portion of the sysadmin skill set is going to be automated so this is very much too little, too late. When you have a team of half a dozen people who can manage thousands or tens of thousands of VMs in AWS or Azure, those 100+ person IT departments start looking bloated.
Also putting pressure on the traditional IT skill set is the continuing downward pressure on hardware costs, BYOD and VDI. There is no need to have a legion of desktop monkeys doing end user support when an organization can rapidly re-deploy hardware and shift applications in real time via virtualized desktops.
As more and more application vendors outsource their support functions and take on the support burden as part of the yearly maintenance cost, the need for in house IT staff will continue to shrink.
There is a lot of M&A activity in the healthcare field right now, and a couple of key vendors are bubbling up to the top of the pile. Within a decade I think we are going to see standardization around a couple of SaaS type platforms. Given all of the data breaches that are going on, individual hospitals and healthcare organizations cannot continue to eat the risk of storing all of that data in house.
Many of the workers, about 200 they estimate, are older, with 15-plus-year tenures. This means a hard job search for them.
As an IT support contractor who works one day to one year per assignment, I hate dealing with people who has been around forever in the IT department. They think that being a contractor is a novelty, joke about getting laid off and taking a six-month vacation on unemployment benefits, and have no clue what they're worth in the job market. The worst part is that all their knowledge is inside their heads and not documented anywhere else. I had two friends who ended up working at drug stores because they fell into this trap, took a six-month vacation and discovered that no wanted to hire them with obsolete job skills. Because they stopped learning after they got out of school, they couldn't change their circumstances and settled for less.
The future for US IT workers is to be a multi-hat jack-of-all-trades who handle all IT in a section or department of a company rather than in a "cubicle factory" doing specialized tasks.
The multi-hatters are not paid as well, but seem less likely to be offshored or outsourced because they know the company in and out. You are not just a number on a beat-counter spreadsheet; you are somebody who knows the personnel and management, and are a face to them.
Table-ized A.I.
Trump is a businessman, that means he steer clear of unprofitable ventures.
Four business bankruptcies later...
They already know they're being outsourced as soon as it happens; the official word is just never given until you're in the middle of training someone who'll be making a tenth your pay.
Now that they realize management has decided to get less expensive and more pliable employees, why wouldn't they gang up on management?
Why should they kowtow to someone for stabbing them in the back?
Also there is the fact that he already takes advantage of H1-B rather than, you know, actually demonstrate his commitment to the cause. I don't vote for people who talk the talk but don't walk the walk.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Actually, the primary people who benefit when expensive workers are replaced by cheaper workers are customers. That should be of particular concern in health care, where costs are through the roof.
The summary says this person requested anonymity but it closed with "she said". Considering this is an IT department, wouldn't the fact that the interviewee is female help the company to narrow down this person?
Trump is a businessman, that means he steer clear of unprofitable ventures. His actions are dictated by what is profitable, FOR HIMSELF.
That means his position shifts when it'll help him reach his goal. I don't see H1B reform being one that will net him profit.
So he is like any other politician, then.
4 out of all but 1. None of his businesses have been a great success, most of them have failed. The only one that's worked really well is his TV show.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
Trump is a businessman, that means he steer clear of unprofitable ventures.
Four business bankruptcies later...
I don't think Trump would make a good president, but as a businessman, why would you not use a government provided means to get out from under your creditors. To not declare bankruptcy when cash flows can't keep up would be the stupid move. As for the OP's position that he steers clear of unprofitable ventures is dead wrong. Trump, like every other venture capitalists throws money at numerous projects knowing that many are not going to pan out. No one project needs to pan out as long as those that do cover the cost of those that don't. That's how venture capitalists work.
So basically you've never voted in your entire live and never will? ;)
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
Organized labor has no power in this country any more. They are even further handicapped by trying to face off with an industry that is so powerful it essentially owns the federal government. Sure, they can't be fired for organizing but the company can fire them for insubordination. Or as the description suggested the company could just fold and then reopen under a new name with the same business plan.
Sorry guys but your goose is cooked. You can't win this one.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
In Healthcare insurance, the people you think of as the customer, are actually the product. The only people who will benefit are the C levels getting bigger bonuses.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Let's just say I have a lot of trouble.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Whether I am "the product" or not is irrelevant; I pay for my healthcare, and if it gets more expensive, I pay more for it.
Yes, with my money. Because of low information voters like you.
Bernie talks the talk and then walks the walk. He's long been apart of Vermont doing things that hurt financially but boost quality of life. That's why Vermont is pretty expensive to live in but your quality of life is usually pretty darn good. I saw that after growing up there and then moving to Arizona. At the time I didn't know how good the state was, nothing real to compare it to. Being in Arizona where they are actually contemplating selling land to pay for education because they can't get people to agree on a tax increase to pay for better than last place.
True but if it gets cheaper, you will not see a dime; you can't even opt out without the government fining you.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
This is a guy who profits by welshing on his contracts and filing for bankruptcy. He's a businessman, just not one I would ever hire or consult.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
No fan of Trump, but he certainly is not doing "what is profitable for himself". As a business decision running for president is a really stupid idea so he is obviously not making decisions based on what makes him the most money.
He does want to feed his ego, which is going to be a lot less predictable than "what makes Trump the most money".
A long time? No banned from federal service for life.
Incorrect. They may have been banned from becoming controllers again, but they were most definitely not banned from federal service for life. How do I know? I'm old enough to have worked in federal service IT with a fired former ATC. This would have been in the late 1980s. He had no problems getting a government clearance to do IT work as a federal employee at a US military base, but he could never be an ATC again. He didn't talk much about it except I do remember that he still thought he did the right thing in going on strike, which was an opinion I did not share.
I'm not at all surprised to see this. Not too long ago, there was a health insurer called GHO+HMI. They were reasonably priced and accepted in most health care locations. They went private, and the NY Dept of Insurance allowed it. In the filings, they claimed competition and market forces would allow them to maintain services and keep rates low. Today, they spend a lot of money on advertising Medicare plans. I had them for two years under an ACA plan...a total waste of money. "oh, we don't accept Emblem from the Exchange" was the refrain in every doc's office. They fought me on every claim, mis processed, and in one instance, refused to help me at least get the negotiated rates for services. They are screwing their IT staff ? Say it ain't so. I heartily wish the senior executives of Emblem Health, their children, and families, the most painful of disease, bone cancers, and dysfunctional major organs with no matching transplant donors. I sincerely hope for a few hospital infections and an incompetent intern at a crucial moment. They screwed a working nonprofit health insurance provider and literally there is NO bad thing they don't deserve.
I have one response to your complaints about health care costs: For Profit Healthcare.
Do you think it's the workers who "forced" Martin Shkreli to raise the price of Daraprim 5,556 percent? Do you think it's the workers who paid congress to ensure Medicare can't negotiate drug prices? If you want to complain about rising health care costs, it's not the workers who are causing it, it's the selfish profiteering CEO's and the expectations of a stock market that stopped caring about investment over absurd ROI expectations of day traders and microsecond traders.
I want to know what people have a 'hard job search' if they are that valuable. Companies poach 50+ y/o good workers all the time in our industry. People will retire and get rehired as part time because of their skill sets.
It makes me wonder if most of these employees are little more than warm bodies.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
That only works if you have another job in hand, as if you might need unemployment during the transition, you won't be getting it...
Yes, you can expect to here this in interviews: "So you used to work for EmblemHealth? Wasn't that the company whose employees all refused to train their replacements?" (or started a union, or filed suit against the company, or whatever else happened)... That could kill off your employment in the entire industry. In fact, this could happen even if you decided to stay on and train your replacement, if enough of your co-workers decide to make a big stink about it and burn their bridges-- yours could get burnt as collateral damage...
The reason Shkreli could raise the price like that is because the government granted him a monopoly.
Medicare could easily negotiate prices, it just chooses not to because government is in bed with drug companies and insurance companies.
Replacing expensive US workers with cheaper foreign workers when possible certainly does lower costs for companies. And why are US workers so expensive? Largely because government mandates make it so.
The beauty about free markets is that selfishness and greed are checked by competition. The reason that isn't happening in the health care market is because government has eliminated competition, by granting artificial monopolies, socializing costs, and standardizing the product.
So, you're right: workers are not to blame, bad government and selfish and greedy politicians are.
I've been reading /. for a long time, but just created an account now to comment here. I really don't have anything valuable to add. I just wanted to say that I'm sorry that this is happening. Hope with the elections close, you will be able to force your lawmakers to take a stand to protect your jobs. 200 employees protesting won't make any change. Even if you are not an employee or customer of EmblemHealth, you should stand in solidarity with them, because if it's their jobs today, it will be yours tomorrow. It is time American companies put people before profits.
IMO, H1-B visa regulations might not prove to be as effective as you think (I'm only guessing). Currently I work (for Cognizant) from offshore for a large US insurance group. My project team consists of about 40% Americans working from US and 60% us from Cognizant. Most of us Cognizant employees work from offshore and don't have H1-B visas. There just need to be 1 or 2 people having visas in the US for us to co-ordinate the work. So I'm not sure a solution solely based on reducing the number of H1-B visas is going to work.
The reason Shkreli could raise the price like that is because the government granted him a monopoly.
Okay, so you're insane. Good to know.
Medicare could easily negotiate prices, it just chooses not to because government is in bed with drug companies and insurance companies.
Medicate can NOT negotiate drug prices, as a matter of law. It is illegal for them to do so.
Replacing expensive US workers with cheaper foreign workers when possible certainly does lower costs for companies. And why are US workers so expensive? Largely because government mandates make it so.
Oh it lowers costs for companies, that will never pass those cost reductions on to you the customer.
The beauty about free markets is that selfishness and greed are checked by competition. The reason that isn't happening in the health care market is because government has eliminated competition, by granting artificial monopolies, socializing costs, and standardizing the product.
So, you're right: workers are not to blame, bad government and selfish and greedy politicians are.
Oh I wish I weren't an atheist so I could call you a God damn loon with more emotional meaning!
It's cheaper than the fines and payouts for data breaches. As long as you give lip service to checking the right checkboxes, you can get liability insurance coverage to cover all that subpar work. They don't care about it actually being good. Just good enough to not get arrested or lose money.
Actually, the primary people who benefit when expensive workers are replaced by cheaper workers are customers. That should be of particular concern in health care, where costs are through the roof.
Or what will happen is you get a bunch of people who don't know what they're doing replacing people who do, then sooner or later you're going to go in for a broken arm and come out with a rectal exam.
Wanna buy a shirt?
https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
It works if you have a cushion, which at the salaries the IT types list on glassdoor for EmblemHealth, they should have.
Slashdot Patriotism: We Support our Dupes!
What side would slashdot posters take if these workers unionized?
You must be new here. Slashdot has been overrun by conservatives for a long, long time. Any union would be roundly bashed by the loudest voices here, regardless of industry. You could have a union formed by independent gun, ammo, and US flag salespeople and slashdot readers would trip over each other telling us how these people were terrible unpatriotic terrorists who should be run out of the country - or up the nearest pole - sooner than possible.
However the thoughts of slashdot posters is irrelevant. These IT workers won't succeed in unionizing, or at least not in doing so and keeping their jobs. Sure, firing people for organizing a union is illegal but it is extremely difficult to prove and these workers are going against the industry that already owns the federal government. They'd have a better chance of growing wings and flying to Mars.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Are you serious? Pyrimethamine itself costs a few cents per pill to manufacture, and there are dozens of manufacturers around the world. Why would someone spend $16000 for a drug if they can just mail order it overseas for a few dollars? Why isn't anybody making and selling those pills for $1/pill in the US, still making a handsome profit? There is only one reason: there are laws against it, laws whose only function is to create monopolies for big political donors. And who is responsible for creating those laws and regulations? The FDA and Congress.
So you agree then: when a government run program by law cannot negotiate drug prices, the fault is with government.
They pass it on to customers in competitive markets because they have to: if they don't, they won't be selling stuff. They don't pass it on in government regulated markets (cable, agriculture, healthcare, etc.) because they don't have to.
You are a religious nut, you just don't know it. And like all religious nuts, facts and reason don't reach you.
You already get that, with high frequency. And paying Dr. Lexus or his IT department twice as much money won't fix it.
I mean, I understand that there's something called Section 7 rights, that *does* allow "professionals" to organize a union.
And if you think one person can wield the documentation hammer, and not be escorted out the door, and the rest made to pick up for them, you're a sucker.
They *do* have the right answer. And, if they do organize, then they've got a stronger case for unfair labor practices.... and a union to help with lawyers and court costs.
mark
That's why Trump is a billionaire, and you're not.
Your comment makes no sense. Filing for bankruptcy is a constitutional right (Article I, Section 8, Clause 4). I exercised my constitutional right for chapter seven bankruptcy in 2011 after being out of work for two years (2009-10). In fact, during the trustee hearing, another person was on his fifth business bankruptcy in 50 years.
1. Tax Company Revenues, Not Profits;
2. Regulate Market Capitalization of Corporations;
Casteism
I wish I could fail that badly than. Estimates of turning $40 million into between $2.5 billion and $10 billion depending on who you talk to. I wish I could fail so badly, I'd even take the $40 million, though I know it would be hard.
But in reality, not 4 to 1, 4 to thousands. He doesn't have a single business, he has thousands of them, and some were bad investments, but that happens in business. creimer is just jealous and feels the need to bring up the bankruptcies on every single mention of Trump.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?